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“The presidential commission has declared war on American postal workers and on service to the American public,” APWU President
William Burrus said today after the final public meeting of the Presidential Commission on the U.S. Postal Service.
Seven months in preparation, the commission’s full report will be delivered to President Bush next week. The commission adopted
the recommendations of four specialized subcommittees, with two of the special committees releasing their proposals last week and the other two doing so today. Burrus said that they appear to be nothing
more than thinly veiled attacks on universal mail service and collective bargaining.
“From what we’ve seen so far, the report is fundamentally dishonest,” the APWU president said. “The commission says it wants to
improve service, then it includes a proposal to broaden USPS powers to close local post offices. They say they want to maintain the USPS monopoly. But then say they want to create a regulatory board to
‘refine and clarify’ the postal monopoly. They say they favor collective bargaining, but they adopted a list of recommendations that would destroy it.
“It would have been more honest,” Burrus added, “if they had just said the Postal Service should not have collective bargaining
at all.”
The commission proposes giving total control of wages to a three-member politically appointed regulatory board. The new Postal
Regulatory Board (PRB) would determine whether postal pay was comparable to the private sector and impose a cap on compensation for new employees. In addition, if the board determines there is a
‘compensation premium’ for current employees, the regulatory board would be authorized to reduce their pay.
Despite strenuous objections from Norman Seabrook, the only labor representative on the panel, the commission voted to
recommend “pay for performance.” Seabrook, president of New York City’s Correctional Officers Benevolent Association, said a proposal to offer productivity incentives to unionized workers was “dangerous”
and would foster a “good ol’ boy network” based on favoritism.
Burrus denounced the idea as well. “How can you reward work floor employees for production?” he asked. “The workers don’t
control production. The machines operate at a set speed and employees have little, if any, ability to affect productivity. Likewise, the efficiency of retail clerks is determined by the number of
customers and the conditions at their stations rather than factors that they can control.”
In another aggressive anti-worker action, the commission approved amending the Postal Reorganization Act to eliminate the
protection against cutting fringe benefits. Under commission recommendations, health benefits and retirement benefits, including retiree health benefits for all current employees, would be subject to
collective bargaining. “The commission seems to be unaware of the reasons for the postal strike of 1970,” Burrus said. “Many postal employees have worked a lifetime for these benefits, which are
guaranteed by law. They will not stand for this and no conscientious elected representative could possibly support it.”
In other actions, the commission has endorsed large-scale outsourcing of mail processing, retail services, transportation, and
motor vehicle maintenance. The panel also has recommended that postage discounts be expanded to apply to small mailers “particularly as new technologies are developed that reflect lowest combined private
sector-postal costs.”
The panel also adopted a recommendation that would cut compensation to injured workers. The proposal would institute a
three-day waiting period for benefits, limit benefits to “two-thirds of the maximum weekly rate,” and would permit the Postal Service to force employees receiving workers compensation to retire as soon
as they become eligible. Currently, injured employees with dependents receive three-quarters of their pay.
“The commission relied on their experience over seven months,” Burrus told the assembled news media in Washington after today’s
meeting, “and in many instances ignored the combined experience found in 240 years of American postal service.
“If adopted, the recommendations would be a disaster for American citizens who rely on the Postal Service as well as to postal
workers. This should energize all the postal workers. The APWU will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that none of this becomes law.”
(The text of the adopted recommendations can be found on the commission’s Web site at www.treas.gov/offices/domestic-finance/usps, via the “Final Report and Recommendations” link.)
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